Geez, such a jaw dropping video. The car seat landed just right and protected the child.
This is such a freak accident. I’ve either driven or been a passenger in at least 40 vehicles in the past 50 years. The door has never flew open even once. I have heard wind noise from doors that weren’t properly closed. It still didn’t open. We just stopped and slammed the door closed.
I’m not convinced charges are needed in this case. Blaming the mom for such a unexpected, freak accident doesn’t make sense.
I used a pillow and leaned my head against the door to nap on long interstate trips. Does that make my parents negligent? I’d say absolutely not. Door latches are so reliable it never crosses anyones mind that they’d pop open.
Glad the baby isn’t hurt and I hope it has a mom that isn’t incarcerated for a unforeseeable freak accident. She should have secured the child seat but that wasn’t the cause of this accident. The door opening caused it.
I guess step one is to get that vehicle’s latch inspected and tested? Find out why it failed?
Forgot to post the update. Police recommend charges of child endangerment and failing to fasten a child restraint system against the mother.
Child endangerment for a freak accident? Good thing a lightning bolt didn’t hit her in the backyard. Or maybe a tree falls on the toddler’s stroller at a park.
My baby was a Houdini and could get out of any carseat. I worried constantly about it. Most cars have childproof door locks on the back doors. All cars with back seats should have a car seat anchor point. If the car seat was belted and anchored properly this ‘freak’ accident would not have occurred. Yes, the parent was negligent. And lucky. Lucky her baby is alive.
Failing to properly secure your child seat is certainly a thing that can happen. However, two-year-old car seats are not like infant car seats - you don’t tend to take the seat in and out with the kid, you leave it in the car most of the time. Therefore the most likely thing is that the kid has been riding around in an unfastened car seat for more than just that trip.
Having your car door pop open is also a thing that can happen. It happens when you don’t close it properly. So now we’ve got TWO possible-but-really-rare failures at the same time.
It doesn’t mean she necessarily HAS to have been negligent, but under the circumstances I’m not entirely shocked that she was charged
The car door wasn’t just closed improperly, it never latched at all. It’s got a two-stage latch, and as long as it’s latched at all, it won’t open unless someone pulls the handle.
Cars also include dashboard warnings about doors that aren’t closed properly. The mother was clueless on numerous counts:
-she didn’t properly secure the seat with the car’s seat belt.
-she didn’t close the passenger door properly - not even enough to engage the first stage of the latch.
-she didn’t notice any wind noise or rattling of the door while driving.
-she didn’t notice any dashboard light/warning indicating that there was a door ajar.
-she didn’t notice the much larger noise of the door swinging wide open (or the view of it in her side mirror) and the kid tumbling out as she rounded the corner, even though the door remained open as she drove a block down the road. In fact, she drove several blocks down the road; at the end of the 40-second video clip, she still had not stopped.
Her lack of situational awareness beggars belief and justifies some kind of legal sanction to get her attention.
IIRC aren’t car door latches made so that a baby or toddler can’t open them?
I can’t remember when I was old enough and strong enough to operate the latch handle. It must of been at least age 4 or 5.
Seatbelts and car seats weren’t that common in the sixties. We used to play in the back of station wagons on trips. I never heard of any kid opening a door accidentally.
This is what I came in to say. Freak accidents can happen to anyone. But she was driving “under the influence” of some kind of substance to not notice that this happened.
It’s also very possible that the child opened the door herself. That is why back doors have child safety locks, but I suspect a parent who doesn’t know how to secure a car seat also doesn’t know how to activate the child safety locks.
It is 100% the adults responsibility to make sure the car seat is properly installed, and most communities have people who will help you do that for free. Having said that, the LATCH system can be tricky. It would be possible to intend to install the seat correctly, but not get the seat properly hooked in, so that it can simply be pulled out. That doesn’t make the parent blameless, but to me moves it from the negligence level of “I don’t care, I didn’t even try” to negligence of “I tried, but I failed.”
There also should have been a center strap that attaches to a top anchor on the parcel shelf or someplace. That one is generally much easier to connect, because it’s not hidden in the crack of the seat. The fact that the seat was not swinging by the center strap next to the car makes me think whoever installed it is closer to the “I don’t care” level of negligence.
Clearly the parent did manage to get the child attached to the seat (at least mostly) correctly.
The door opening is unforeseeable (for certain values of unforeseeable), the child seat not being secured to the car is not. I’ll note here that if the seat was properly secured, the child wouldn’t have fallen out of the car. I’ll also note that your thread title is about the car seat falling out, not the door opening, because the car seat falling out is the actual important thing that happened. Nobody, not even the cops, give a crap about the door opening, if this mom is incarcerated it’s going to be a result of the seat falling out, or whatever other crimes she may have committed.
I’ll thirdly point out that securing the car seat to the car is every bit as important as buckling the child to the car seat. It’s not like you get 50% of the protection by buckling 50% of the buckles, you get 0% of the protection.
I fail to see how a 2 year old in a car seat could possibly open a car door. A kindergartener in a booster seat? Oh yeah, that’s possible. But a toddler with a five point harness? No way.
The parent should be penalized for gross negligence. I think that’s an open and shut case.
As someone who has done more than my share of fighting with seats, I don’t see how you could intend to do Latch and fail a simple connection (while sober).
Not tight enough? Sure. Lots of people struggle with that. But latch has two connections, either one of which would have held that seat in. She would have had to fail in connecting both of them.
Remember the carseat isn’t attached, so it might be right up against the door. Kids are devious. Little hands will reach and pull everything. Little feet will push their way into holes and crevices, like under door handle. In this case the kid doesn’t have to pull the handle and push open the door, just pull the handle, as the centripetal force opened the door.
Not seeing how a child will do something dangerous is the first step in the child doing that thing.
Some Latch attachments use a push on clip that is released with a button, as show in this diagram. That diagram does lie and shows the Latch anchors as nice easy to reach things sticking out above the seat cushions. They are often hidden in the crack between cushions, and the angle of the crack and the angle of the anchors and clips can be such that they don’t line up, and the cushions have to be compressed to get a secure attachment. You have to listen for the click and pull to check. I’ve certainly put the clips in and had them connect with the anchor but not click into place. Obviously, I tried again until I got it right.
As I said, seeing as how the top strap wasn’t connected either, my guess is there was no attempt to install the seat correctly. But, I’d be willing to believe a half-assed attempt was made. I can think of other scenarios, such as the car seat was being used elsewhere, then just set in the car with the intention to attach it later, but it was never secured. Still 100% the responsibility of the adult to make sure everything is as it should be, but changing the degree of culpability.
I’m not buying it. A rear door handle on any four door – that sort of looks like a Honda Civic – will have the passenger reach forward to open the door. A kid of that age, strapped in, has maybe two, four inches tops of reach, no matter how squirmy they are.
Unless the carseat was wedged in between the rear and front seats, and not actually resting on the rear seat at all (much less strapped in), with the kid’s feet within a couple inches of the door handle, I just can’t see how that’s physically possible in the least. And even if the car seat is within range of the door handle, then it cannot be reasonable to think that the carseat was mistakenly secured.
An unsecured baby seat isn’t just a danger inf the door flies open it’s a danger if there’s any kind of accident or even an emergency stop. Yes the driver was negligent and it warrants investigation.
